Three weeks ago, I was thinking back to the day I first started writing fiction and I went back to my spreadsheets to check how long it had been (Yes. It’s me. Of course there was a spreadsheet from day 1). It was 9 April 2016 that I wrote the first sentences of fiction since school and I started to dream of one day holding a book in my hand that had my name on it. I realised I was coming up on my five-year anniversary and I decided to celebrate it and to celebrate that dream by putting together a short story collection, a tangible something I could hold in my hand and see what I’ve managed to achieve.
Alt-ernate is available now from Amazon and should be available from other online retailers or for you ask your local bookshop to order in shortly (turns out putting a collection together in 3 weeks means everything but the Amazon editions is a little further behind, sorry. If you’re local to me in Wellington, I’ll have some paperbacks available from May).
I’ve included the introduction and acknowledgments from the book below. Thank you so much to everyone who has supported me!
ALT-ERNATE INTRODUCTION
Five years ago, on the 9th of April 2016 when my children were six, four, and two, I sat down and decided to write a middle-grade high fantasy novel. The last time I had written fiction would have been sixth-form English when I was sixteen. My husband was a screenwriter when we met, but I’d never had the energy or inclination to extend beyond writing the policy briefings and cabinet papers of my day job. That night, I wrote my first 685 words and over the next 18 months I wrote 64,000.
In February 2018, I started writing short stories and I wasn’t just writing for my kids anymore. At some point I started calling myself a writer even though it felt like I was pretending. I had stories accepted into magazines and anthologies. I set up a website. I found the most amazingly supportive group of writing friends I could ever wish for and I found myself. It was an alternate self I desperately needed that was entirely separate from being Mel the mum or Mel the bureaucrat.
The first two sentences I wrote back in 2016 were these: Curiosity flew above the shipyard of Anderah leaning into the warm thermals rising from below. The people working on the ground, tiny in the distance, took no notice. It’s easy to forget how high we’ve managed to soar and to feel like no one will notice. I rack up well over 100 story rejections every year. Last year, I burned out and wrote nothing at all for months on end. Sometimes it feels like nothing will ever happen again.
This book is my reminder that things have happened and that they will continue to happen. It is my reminder that writing is joy; that my brain loves to drift through alternating genres, ideas, and lengths and twist them up into stories I didn’t know were hovering in my consciousness. I’ve written over 300,000 words over the last five years. It’s not much for some, but it’s a lot more than the zero I’d written before that and it’s a lot less than I will have written in another five or fifteen years.
This collection includes a story for each year of my life so far, alternating between micro-fiction and longer stories and including five previously unpublished works to celebrate my fifth anniversary of writing. The stories are fantasy, science fiction, slipstream and horror. They’ve been published in over 20 different publications. They range from sweet or light-hearted to downright dark, but even in the sweet there is always a hint of the creepy, strange or melancholy.
Alt-ernate is a window to the alternate me that has been growing since 2016. I hope you enjoy the view. Thank you for your support.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Huge thanks to everyone who has helped me on my writing journey over the last five years! This is going to be a long list, sorry.
Thank you to my husband for reading my first short story and telling me he thought it was a worthy entry to the genre (‘These Walls’ still hasn’t been published but it’s out on submission again so I haven’t included it here). Thank you to my children for their patience, pride and excitement, and to the rest of my family for their support even when they think my stories are weird lol.
Thank you to my ‘book club’, Becca, Natalie and Emily, who listened and encouraged throughout the drafting of my first novel and still do so.
Thank you to all the people who have read my stories, given me feedback, nominated me for awards, written a review, or reached out to say something kind about my writing. You have no idea what a difference it makes.
Special thanks to the amazing communities of writers I have found and created, and to the many unexpectedly awesome friendships that resulted. I have learned so much from you and you pick me up and keep me going every time I falter. There are so many that I am bound to miss someone, but I’m going to try anyway.
To the writing friends who reached out to me on Twitter and gave me hugs, company and support when I turned up terrified to my first NatCon, thank you! (Looking at you Janna Ruth, M. Darusha Wehm, Andi C. Buchanan, Octavia Cade, A.J. Fitzwater, Marie Hodgkinson, and Cassie Hart).
To my Speculative Collective slack crew, I would be a mess without you. I am grateful for you every day (shout out to T. and Cassie for making that group happen with me and for being ridiculously talented writers and friends).
To my Wellington Speculative Creatives drinks group, thank you for turning up month after month and reminding me I’m not alone.
To my Witchy Fiction indie publishing team, you helped get me through lockdown and were the only reason I wrote much at all in 2020. You folks are awesome (everyone go buy all the feel-good kiwi witchy fiction novellas at witchyfiction.com!).
To Amber and Marie, you brought the joy back to my reading and writing and you’re the best team of cheerleaders I could ever hope for.
To the many other writers who have also made the time to teach and support me, thank you, including: Graci Kim, Toni Wi, Casey Lucas, Isa Pearl Ritchie, Ryn Yee, the Brilliants, Pippa Werry and the Wellington NZSA branch committee, the Hugo Award finalists of 2020 who I worked with, and the Codexians. And especially to:
Sarah Pinsker, my SFWA mentor who probably doesn’t even realise how much she helped to put my brain and my writing career back together when they broke in 2020.
Cassie Hart, who became my partner-in-inclusion and a dear friend in the lead up to ConZealand and who I am so ridiculously proud of. You have taught me so much, you are a constant inspiration and you are always there when I need you.
Andi C. Buchanan, who has generously and endlessly given me advice and feedback on far more than just my short fiction.
M. Darusha Wehm, who has consistently given me some of the best advice I’ve had on short fiction and writing as a career, starting when they had just won a Sir Julius Vogel Award and I was hiding in the corner of the bar and most recently also at a bar where they told me that of course I could put a short story collection out in three weeks just because it would make me happy. I promise we don’t only communicate at bars.
And my eternal thanks to everyone who has published my stories, including the publications in which many of the stories in this collection have appeared:
Apocalypse from Black Hare Press, for publishing ‘A Squash of Commuters’ and ‘A Galactic Symphony’
The Arcanist for publishing ‘Strands of Our Tomorrows’
The Best of British Fantasy 2019 from Newcon Press for reprinting ‘The Fisher’
Black Dogs, Black Tales from Things in the Well Press, for publishing ‘Synaesthete’
Breach Zine for publishing ‘A Devoted Husband’ and ‘When Supermarkets Go Bad’
Curses & Cauldrons from Blood Song Books, for publishing ‘She Was No Witch’, ‘Green is More Than Skin Deep’, and ‘Break Glass in Case of Emergency’
Daily Science Fiction, for publishing ‘A New Cold War’
Frozen Wavelets, for publishing ‘Radio Silence’ and ‘An Eye for an Eye’
GeyserCon Book for publishing ‘An Avian Introduction’
Little Blue Marble, for publishing ‘GAC ATG ATT ACC’
Midnight Echo from AHWA, for publishing ‘A Second Chance’
New Orbit, for publishing ‘Revolutions’ and ‘The Gift of Time’
NewMyths, for publishing ‘Unrequited Sonata’ and ‘A Fairy Tale’
newsroom, for publishing ‘The Fisher’
NFFD Micromadness, for publishing ‘Big Brother’ and ‘See Me’
Takahē, for publishing ‘Love Note’, ‘Only Child’, and ‘Love Cage’
Trickster’s Treats from Things in the Well Press, for publishing ‘The Six Stages of Revenge’
Wild Musette Journal, for publishing ‘Common Denominator’
Worlds from Black Hare Press, for publishing ‘Indenture is a Nervous System’
Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy Volumes 1 and 2 from Paper Road Press for reprinting ‘Common Denominator’ and ‘The Fisher’
Year’s Best Hardcore Horror Volume 6 from Red Room Press for reprinting ‘Synaesthete’